Days have passed and I’ve written nothing. I haven’t had the courage to face the page. It’s been a strange silent time with little contact from Nick, Will, or Cal. The days are so hot that I keep all the window blinds closed and the air conditioning set at seventy-two.
I’m watching TV, which I’ve been doing a lot, and it’s only midmorning. As a family, when Cal and Will were growing up, we had a policy of never turning on the TV until after dinner. Except for Saturday early morning cartoons that the kids were allowed to watch for a couple of hours.
I sit in front of some morning show, and the host, a well-dressed, good-looking generic woman in her late thirties, holds up a book and talks in an overly animated way about marriage.
“This book will change the way you relate to your spouse. Guaranteed. If men are from Mars and women from Venus, Marilyn’s book will guide you both safely to the same planet. Here, you’ll learn how to communicate in the same language and act with forgiveness, not grudges. I know with Brian…” she pauses slightly, turns, looks at a cameraman, then laughs are heard all around. “I know, I know,” she says. “The point is that Marilyn has answers, and all of us married people need answers. Right? After the break, Marilyn will be back to give us some of her answers. Let me tell you, they work.” The camera cuts to an Allstate insurance commercial in which a man assures us we’re in good hands.
So, what’s the problem between Nick and me? Are we still together? Why haven’t I been hearing from him? Are we from separate planets? Speaking different languages? Has our marriage finally unraveled?
I snap off the show. I’d turn on Hit and Miss, but last night I watched the last episode. I go upstairs, through the shadowy house to my computer, having decided that I’ll inventory all the important people in my life—think about and write about—my relationship with them. Then, I’ll inventory all the important events in my life, sizing them up, determining their values and effects. Take stock. Get myself right.
First, though, I’ll shower, get dressed, make the bed. I feel disordered, like I’m losing it. Crazy and suicidal people, I’ve heard, let themselves and their homes fall into disarray. They stop caring. But I won’t let that happen.
Having made these decisions, I feel better, cheerful actually, as I get into the shower, let the hot water stream over me. I bring awareness to this moment—a shifting of attention—something I do when I meditate. But the challenge is to take this focused attention “off the cushion,” into daily life. There’s the difficulty. I breathe consciously and meditate. The water encourages this, the enclosed space of the shower stall encourages this, and I stand in the downpour, opening myself.
At the end of Anna Karenina, Levin, the fictional surrogate for Tolstoy, contemplates the nature of his life, of life itself.
“What is life’s meaning?” Levin asks plainly. As he struggles to answer, he realizes that the peasants have something to teach him. They live their work, which is tied to the natural world—the seasons and the physical labor of tending crops. Earlier in the book, Levin joins the peasants as they scythe wheat for harvest. The rhythms of bending, cutting, collecting, and moving from swath to swath create a transcendent experience for Levin, one that frees him from intense intellectual activity yet connects him to the earth and to his physical being.
By the book’s end, Levin connects this simple work to God. In sync with the rhythms of his labor, he’s in sync with the rhythms of life and the seasons—which become both literal and metaphorical. And here, Levin finds God.
After my lovely shower and my brief focused meditation, I sit at my computer, about to take inventory as I planned.
People first: Nick, Cal, Will, Jesse, Suzanne. Next: family of origin: mother, father, Dennis…Lydia? Yes. Julia, their first born? Yes. Hannah, whom I’ve never met? Yes. Friends: Sonya, Jackie, Claudia, Elizabeth, Joel, Phoebe, Donna…and newer friends: Naomi, Diana, Stephanie…great women I’ve met. But my list seems short. I stop.
I think about death. Suicide. Why?
The next list: “things I have”—a house, many books, a computer, a car—the list here is very short.
At the end of Anna Karenina, Levin becomes an existentialist—to do is to be. When he finds himself doing the physical, necessary, simple work, his life has meaning. It’s as if our existence is best felt in our muscles.
How would I do it? Anna throws herself under a train in a prolonged episode of desperation. She thinks she has no choice; Vronsky has lost interest in her, her husband won’t give her a divorce, she can’t love her daughter, and she’s lost her beloved son. After she tosses her bag and jumps beneath an oncoming train, timing her jump so that she falls in between its wheels, she immediately regrets her decision. Beneath the train, she realizes her suicide is a mistake. She wants to stand up but it’s too late.
I read over my inventory and think of each of the people on my list without me. Nick first. Yes, he’d miss me, feel guilty for not calling more often this summer, not realizing how desperate and depressed I’d become, but he’d move on. My death might even liberate him.
I think of Cal—he’d miss me but he’s married, perhaps thinking of a family of his own. Will, well, he’d take my suicide hard. My death would open a dark door. But he’ll marry one day—perhaps Suzanne—and find his way forward with his art.
My friends? Ultimately, they wouldn’t be affected. A few sad months, and I’d be an interesting story.
Life goes on without us. Inventory over, computer off.
k
I’m dressed now, in Ruby, driving north on Ramsey Street, which turns into Route 401, so I’m traveling the slow road to Raleigh. Why not?
Traveling about ten miles above the posted limit, I think of having an accident, driving off the road, steering into oncoming traffic, which would be selfish, so it’s a thought I immediately dismiss. I think of going home, drinking some hard liquor. We have rum in the credenza. Maybe I could overdose on my old sleep meds—I have a full vial in the cabinet. Last year I worked hard to get off them, and although successful, I’ve kept the entire stash, just in case. But would they kill me? Or just leave me incapacitated? Another botched suicide attempt would be the worst thing.
We have a rifle or shotgun of some kind—I don’t know the difference—taken from our friend Judith when we were all in graduate school together. She kept it in the trunk of her car and was going to kill herself with it during a particularly difficult month. Her son had been fathered by the man she loved, and she didn’t love her husband, her son’s legal father. I don’t remember the whole story, but after Judith had told us about the shotgun, Nick removed it when Judith parked at a nearby grocery story. Judith knew Nick had taken it, but they never talked about it, and Judith had never asked for it.
But I don’t know how to shoot. What am I thinking?
In Fuquay-Varina, I see a Dairy Queen, decide to treat myself to a thick milkshake made with bits of chocolate or candy. Food therapy. Something sweet. Something to connect me to my body. And now that I’ve had this idea, I’m obsessed with it.
I’m in the turning lane when I burst out into sobs. But there’s a lot of traffic, and I need to cross two lanes to make my turn. I wipe my face, try to get a grip. Instead, I see the faces of drivers and passengers locked in their automobile cages—blank faces, talking into cell phone faces, smoking cigarette faces, dead faces.
A guy pulls behind me in a black Ford Explorer, also to turn into Dairy Queen. Then, with a small break in the traffic, I go, and he follows. I park, but he drives to the dry cleaners next door.
I pull in between two empty parking spaces, turn off the engine. The sun is intense, and the car, without the a/c, immediately becomes unbearable. I’m no longer crying. I feel numb, blank.
I get out of the car, lock Ruby, and, before going to the Dairy Queen, a rack of colorful items on the sidewalk by the strip mall catches my attention. As I walk there, the man from the black Explorer comes out of the dry cleaners, holding a gaggle of wire hangers tied together, clothing draped in plastic, his hand lifted high to prevent dragging them. He notices me and smiles. I smile back, headed to the rack that I now see is part of the Dollar General store, attached to the narrow strip mall. It’s an old, decrepit building, with racks of $1.00 tee-shirts lined up in front on the sidewalk, along with stacks of big blue baby pools, shelves of half-dead petunias in plastic tubs, and broken glass by the curb.
When I was living in New York City, after Diane tried to kill herself, I felt so alienated and disconnected that I had taken a shard of glass I’d found on the street and slashed my palm—just to feel something.
But it hadn’t worked. My hand bled, but I couldn’t feel it, and I pocketed the glass as a souvenir, leaving it in Diane’s apartment when I moved from the city.
Now as I walk, recognizing a similar alienation, I imagine picking up a shard to see if cutting my hand might now help me feel something. But I’m older and dismiss the idea.
Looking up, I see a young White woman with a toddler in tow. She wears tiger-striped leggings and a jazzed-up gold-threaded tank top. The toddler, her son, perhaps, is dressed in superman pajamas and has a dirty face. As I stare at her, she looks at me, frowns. I glance away, deciding to walk back to the Dairy Queen.
Inside, the atmosphere is as forlorn as it was at the strip mall. This Dairy Queen hasn’t been remodeled in years. The Linoleum tile floor is cracked, uneven, the few tables are shabby, seats with ripped upholstery, and even the red service counter is dull, beat-up. The side freezers, full of Dilly-bars and ice-cream cakes, have a dirty look to them, and the motor makes a shrill hum. I get in line behind an older couple with matching navy velour sweat-suits. They order two small chocolate cones. The place only has vanilla, however, as the soft-serve chocolate machine is broken. So, they reluctantly change their order to vanilla.
My turn comes, and a young man in a red Dairy Queen golf-type shirt and stained black pants asks, “Your order, ma’am?” I tell him I’ll have a small Turtle Pecan Cluster Blizzard, to which he says, “Yes, I’ll have that for you in a minute. Would you like to pay first?” To which I say, “Yes,” and hand him a five-dollar bill. As he moves to the register, I notice his right hand is deformed and doesn’t have all its fingers. He offers me change with his left, smiles, nods as he turns to fill my order.
All the details of my life are happening now in slow motion now as I bring such focused attention to each moment. Depression, I wonder?
The older couple leaves. Now a Black woman with a tight skimpy shirt and stretchy pants comes in. Her hair is braided into a thousand strands, a sort of medusa, and as I look into her face, I see that she’s ravishingly beautiful, with chiseled features, bright eyes. She’s out of breath, but when she sees me looking at her, she smiles—radiantly, naturally, with incredible warmth.
“Do you have a public restroom?” she asks the young man.
“It’s out of order today, ma’am. You can use the one in the Dollar General. If you exit through the side door, you’ll see it at the end of the lot.” He smiles back at her, her smile obviously contagious. I notice now the young man has dimples. Sweet, I think.
“Thanks,” she says, and leaves. I see her trot across the lot to Roses. No car, I observe. She’s a runner.
In a few minutes, with my Blizzard in hand, I, too, walk out. But as I make my way to Ruby, I spot a concrete garden bench at the side of the store on the sidewalk that goes around the building. Probably for employees, but I sit.
As my thick Blizzard melts in the waxed cardboard cup, I dip the long-handled red plastic spoon into the ice-cream mixture, scoop some out, eat, enjoying the sweet cool flavor, its weight on my tongue, the smooth way it feels in my mouth.
I breathe deeply, look around—first, into the parking lot, then to my left, into the road traffic, still heavy. I turn my gaze closer, near the bench—noticing a large beetle making its way across the sidewalk. The beetle’s thin little legs work in unison, creeping along to the asphalt lot. The back shell is iridescent green and black; the segmented, logical little body perfectly supports its action. I notice that the sidewalk is very roughly paved, and the bug struggles up the tiny concrete crevices, hills, valleys. A difficult path, a treacherous journey. Where is it going? And why? I think for a moment of putting the beetle on my hand to observe it better, but that seems too intrusive. So, I get down, onto my hands and knees, putting my Blizzard on the bench.
“Tell me something, little bug,” I say. “Tell me something I don’t know.” My face is close to the pavement now as I ask the beetle, “How do you find your way in this great big universe?”
Obviously, I’m insane. I startle myself with the realization. Thankfully, no one is around to observe a middle-age woman almost on her belly, watching a bug crawl outside of a Dairy Queen.
Quickly, I stand up, throwing out my half-eaten, half-melted Blizzard into a dumpster behind the cement-block half-wall at the end of the parking lot. I look back to see that my beetle has successfully crawled down the enormous curb, onto the asphalt, and is making its way to who knows where and for who knows what purpose. “Goodbye,” I call. “Good luck with all things.”